Product description

Far from fading with time, Kenneth Grahame's classic tale of fantasy has attracted a growing audience in each generation. Rat, Mole, Badger and the preposterous Mr Toad (with his 'Poop-poop-poop' road-hogging new motor car), have brought delight to many through the years with their odd adventures on and by the river, and at the imposing residence of Toad Hall.

Editorial reviews

Does The Wind in the Willows need an annotated edition? Suggesting that Grahame's prose, "encrusted with the patina of age and affect," has become an obstacle to full appreciation of the work, Lerer offers the text with running disquisitions in the margins on now-archaic words and phrases, Edwardian social mores and a rich array of literary references from Aesop to Gilbert and Sullivan. Occasionally he goes over the top - making, for instance, frequent references alongside Toad's supposed mental breakdown to passages from Kraft-Ebing's writings on clinical insanity - and, as in his controversial Children's Literature, a Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter (2008), displays a narcissistic streak: "This new edition brings The Wind in the Willows...into the ambit of contemporary scholarship and criticism on children's literature..." Still, the commentary will make enlightening reading for parents or other adults who think that there's nothing in the story for them - and a closing essay on (among other topics) the links between Ernest Shepard's art for this and for Winnie the Pooh makes an intriguing lagniappe. (selective resource list) (Literary analysis. Adult/professional) (Kirkus Reviews)

Back cover copy

The Wind in the Willows is a book for those 'who keep the spirit of youth alive in them; of life, sunshine, running water, woodlands, dusty roads, winter firesides.'